25 Businesses That Started and Grew During the Pandemic
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While the pandemic has been responsible for a wave of business closures and layoffs, entrepreneurs have also been opening new businesses at a record-high level. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 4.4 million new companies were established in 2020, and most of these are small businesses.
People’s motives for starting a business in uncertain times are numerous, but over half (57 percent) cite wanting to be their own boss as the main factor. Some workers were laid off and can’t find work or don’t want to go back to their former jobs. Others want to continue working from home or want more flexibility in their work life. Some people launched a business idea they’ve had for a while or expanded a side hustle to become their main income.
New technologies such as video communication, social media, e-commerce, digital payment systems and DIY websites are giving entrepreneurs the ability to launch a business with low overhead, fast returns, and little or no staff. The pandemic also created new business opportunities as online ordering, delivery services and remote learning became widespread.
This isn’t a coastal phenomenon either. The most active region for new startups in America isn’t Silicon Valley or New York City, but the Deep South, in states such as Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.
Here are 25 small- to medium-sized businesses that started during the pandemic and have grown and become profitable. We ranked them by revenue for the most recent year available, from lowest- to highest-earning.
25. Silent Pursuit
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Industry: Hunting Equipment/Retail
Founded: April 2021
Headquarters: Provo, Utah
Revenue 2021: $16,000 (estimated)
Bottom Line: Silent Pursuit
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Cody Nielsen grew up in rural Nevada and became an avid hunter. In August 2019, he was hunting deer and wished he had a pair of quiet moccasins for tracking. The stalkers and handmade leather moccasins he found online were out of his price range.
Thinking other hunters might also want a cheaper alternative, he decided to develop and sell an inexpensive quiet moccasin. Nielsen had prototypes made and set up a Shopify store. He is currently making about $2,000 per month and expanding his product line.
24. Fem ’n STEM
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Industry: Education
Founded: 2020
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
Revenue 2020: unknown
Revenue 2021: $18,000
Bottom Line: Fem ’n STEM
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When Yale University closed in early 2020 because of the pandemic, freshman student Whitney Bowen returned home and quickly became bored. She had previously taught summer science camps for girls. Needing a project, Bowen dreamed up the idea of a science-themed box that would contain all the materials needed to conduct four science experiments.
She wanted to show girls stuck at home that science can be fun and engaging. Her new company became profitable after the first month, and Bowen is currently working on developing Fem 'n STEM birthday parties.
23. Tarot Stack
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Industry: Retail
Founded: June 2021
Headquarters: Providence, Rhode Island
Revenue 2021:$18,000
Bottom Line: Tarot Stack
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Shamanth Suresh and co-founder Eve both worked in the corporate tech industry for over 10 years. They were both interested in using Tarot cards, but they had a hard time finding new and original decks with beautiful artwork, so they decided to launch a website selling new indie Tarot cards.
The site sells Tarot, Oracle and affirmation decks made by independent and often unknown artists. Tarot Stack partners with new artists, covers the cost of printing and publishing and sells the cards through its website and an affiliate network. Suresh expects the company to earn $36,000 in 2022.
22. Focused by Fredi
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Industry: Health and Wellness
Founded: April 2020
Headquarters: Santa Monica, California
Revenue 2020: $31,500
Revenue 2021: $42,000
Bottom Line: Focused by Fredi
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Mitch and Chelsea Glaser are a brother and sister team of entrepreneurs. Mitch was working as an investment banker, and the long working hours and stressful conditions were taking a toll on his health. He developed a nootropic dietary supplement that boosted his cognitive and mental skills.
Mitch and Chelsea discovered that women represented an underserved market for nootropic supplements. The pair hired a formulation specialist to devise a formula just for women and worked with a local supplier to create the Focused by Fredi brand.
21. Better Sheets
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Industry: Education Technology
Founded: April 2020
Headquarters: Los Angeles, California
Revenue 2020:$36,000
Revenue 2021: $48,000
Bottom Line: Better Sheets
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Better Sheets began as a side project for founder Andrew Kamphey (pictured), who ran a web app business. When his co-founder commented how impressive his Google spreadsheets looked, Kamphey decided to start a small online business making video tutorials on how to make clean, efficient Google sheets.
He designed a website offering a mix of free and paid tutorials, offering both a lifetime membership and monthly subscriptions. Better Sheets now offers more than 100 video tutorials as well as scripts and templates.
20. Bradford Bakery
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Industry: Food Retail
Founded: October 2020
Headquarters: McKinney, Texas
Revenue 2020: Unknown
Revenue 2021: $48,000
Bottom Line: Bradford Bakery
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Amanda Bradford went to culinary school and had been working in restaurants and catering for almost 15 years. She loved making cakes and pastries and dreamed for several years of opening her own bakery.
Bradford started out with a pop-up shop and tasting appointments for the public and slowly grew a loyal clientele. She makes vegan and gluten-free products as well as more traditional pastries and cakes and keeps overhead low by only baking to order. Bradford also offers cooking and baking classes for both adults and kids.
19. Deebo Agency
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Industry: Marketing
Founded: March 2020
Headquarters: Toronto, Canada
Revenue 2020: Unknown
Revenue 2021: $48,000
Bottom Line: Deebo Agency
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Christian Di Bratto is a 19-year-old college student who brokers lucrative deals for social media influencers with brands. His clients are TikTok video creators who have at least 1 million followers, and he consults with other talent agencies to help them build their own businesses.
Di Bratto lost his job in March 2020 when the hockey school where he was teaching closed. He started cold-emailing TikTok creators asking if he could find them a brand partnership, built a client list and now charges 20 percent commission on all deals he arranges.
18. Ticker Nerd
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Industry: Financial
Founded: October 2020
Headquarters: Sydney, Australia
Revenue 2020: $17,600 (estimated)
Revenue 2021: $54,000
Bottom Line: Ticker Nerd
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Ticker Nerd is a subscription investment newsletter started by two friends, Luc Viterale and Sam Renotte (pictured). The two wanted to create a monthly subscription newsletter that found and analyzed undervalued stocks.
The pair originally wanted to build a tool that tracked underperforming companies, but they quickly found that the tools already existed — however, the data generated wasn’t user-friendly. Viterale and Renotte were able to launch their newsletter on Product Hunt, a popular tech curation site and quickly had $5,800 in recurring monthly income from subscriptions.
17. The Design Database
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Industry: Marketing
Founded: July 2021
Headquarters: Brooklyn, New York
Revenue 2021: $25,000 (estimated)
Revenue 2022: $60,000 (estimated)
Bottom Line: The Design Database
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The Design Database is an online platform that connects freelancers looking for work with clients who need creative talent or with other creatives to network and form collaborative partnerships.
Courtlyn Jones is a visual artist and graphic designer who founded the site after realizing that, instead of working in her field, she wanted to help other designers find work. Jones markets the platform on LinkedIn and Instagram and is creating a new model for hiring creatives in which employers see examples of a creator’s work before reading their resume.
16. FBI Cosmetics
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Industry: Beauty
Founded: January 2021
Headquarters: Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Revenue 2021: $102,000
Bottom Line: FBI Cosmetics
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As a former felon, Alexis Evans was unable to find a job, so she decided to start her own company. She used $1,500 in savings to manufacture her own private-label cosmetics from manufacturers in California and China.
Once her line began generating profit, Evans negotiated with the manufacturers to make custom colors and products for her range. She is currently developing new products in consultation with an esthetician. Evans recently partnered with Walmart Marketplace and is expanding her product line.
15. Houle Sports
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Industry: Collectibles/Memorabilia
Founded: October 2020
Headquarters: New York, New York
Revenue 2020: $20,000 (estimated)
Revenue 2021: $120,000
Bottom Line: Houle Sports
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Adam Torkildson learned about collecting baseball cards from his son’s coach, David Houle. He discovered that sports memorabilia is a $10.8 billion market. Torkildson partnered with Houle, bought an established eBay business and started selling baseball cards online. He financed the new company with $10,000 he’d earned in another business.
Torkildson spent most of his initial investment buying a scanning technology called Kronocard that detects fake cards and on cataloging and listing software for his eBay site. Houle Sports now generates $10,000 per month.
14. Diva Dog Bakery
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Industry: Pet Food
Founded: November 2020
Headquarters: Franklin, Tennessee
Revenue 2021: $132,000
Bottom Line: Diva Dog Bakery
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Kristin Larsen (pictured) previously ran a successful business making dog treats. She sold at markets, took pre-orders through her website and expanded the business nationally using the craft retail site, Etsy. Larsen closed down the business to return to a corporate role.
She recently returned to full-time entrepreneurship by selling online training courses. Larsen decided to add a course for anyone wanting to set up their own thriving dog treat business. Diva Dog Bakery launched in November 2020 and is now generating $11,000 a month.
13. Get Ayuda
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Industry: Manufacturing
Founded: February 2020
Headquarters: Mexico City, Mexico
Revenue 2020: $160,000
Revenue 2021: $192,000
Bottom Line: Get Ayuda
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Three founders, Menajem Benchimol, Zeev Levy and Elias Dichi, started Get Ayuda to help manufacturing companies switch production to Mexican factories after the disruption of Chinese supply chains. They realized that Mexican factories could offer American manufacturers proximity to the U.S., ground transportation and similar wages to China.
The trio has created a unique database of factories in Mexico that’s not available elsewhere. They’ve built solid working relationships with local manufacturers and handle the entire supply chain side for customers from approving samples to delivering finished goods.
12. CLOSEM
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Industry: Marketing
Founded: January 2020
Headquarters: Jackson, California
Revenue 2020: $200,000
Revenue 2021: $200,000
Bottom Line: CLOSEM
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Founder Richard Miles had a long career in sales and marketing before becoming an entrepreneur. Returning in 2020 to the U.S. from Africa where he’d been living, Miles needed a new project. He noticed that many people, particularly small business owners, weren’t good at following up on sales leads.
Miles set out to develop a user-friendly software program that would help make the process easier and more productive. He and co-founder Laura Betterly (pictured) developed CLOSEM. The service offers customers email templates and video tutorials, so they can quickly and easily design emails for potential customers.
11. Power Move Marketing
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Industry: Marketing
Founded: 2019
Headquarters: Charlotte, North Carolina
Revenue 2020: $264,000
Revenue 2021: $264,000
Bottom Line: Power Move Marketing
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Hailey Brooke McFadden started her digital marketing agency in 2019 while she was still a student at the Wake Forest School of Business. She had been a successful college athlete, had briefly worked as a sports journalist and turned the skills she’d learned promoting herself online into promoting clients.
McFadden’s goal was to set up an agency that specialized in marketing to female consumers. By May 2020, she had registered her company, hired her first employee and was earning $22,000 per month.
10. Sweat From Home
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Industry: Health and Wellness
Founded: March 2020
Headquarters: Brooklyn, New York
Revenue 2020: Unknown
Revenue 2021: $300,000
Bottom Line: Sweat From Home
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In March 2020, Kyle Bergman and his friend Brendan were laid off from the fitness studio where they worked as personal trainers. They decided to set up a business offering live-streaming, interactive workout classes on Zoom.
Kyle had previously launched a business as an e-commerce entrepreneur and was already experienced in digital marketing. Plus, the two trainers already had a loyal following of clients, and over 20 people enrolled for their debut class. Sweat From Home has since hired seven additional trainers and offers more than 45 classes each week.
9. Cafe Cà Phê
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Industry: Restaurant
Founded: October 2020
Headquarters: Kansas City, Missouri
Revenue 2020: Unknown
Revenue 2021: $360,000
Bottom Line: Cafe Cà Phê
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In 2020, Jackie Nguyen, a first-generation Vietnamese American, was acting in the revival tour of the Broadway musical "Miss Saigon." Kansas City was one of the stops on the show’s cross-country tour, and Nguyen fell in love with the city.
A trip to Vietnam had inspired her to think about a way to bring Vietnamese coffee to the mainstream American market. When theaters went dark in 2020 and Nguyen found herself unemployed, she moved to Kansas City and opened the region’s first Vietnamese coffee shop, which quickly became popular.
8. Oglewood Avenue
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Industry: Retail
Founded: October 2020
Headquarters: Knoxville, Tennessee
Revenue 2020: $60,000 (estimated)
Revenue 2021: $400,000 (estimated)
Bottom Line: Oglewood Avenue
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Wedding photographer Jade Adams found herself out of work when the pandemic hit and turned to her hobby of collecting and cultivating exotic houseplants. She started selling plants on Facebook.
In July 2020, Adams took part in a pop-up event and sold $15,000 worth of plants. Sensing a profitable business opportunity, she used her savings to set up a plant business called Oglewood Avenue. Adams sells plants and offers additional services, such as interior plant styling, horticulture consultations and plant-related craft workshops.
7. ColdInbox
Industry: Marketing
Founded: April 2020
Headquarters: Sydney, Australia
Revenue 2020: $280,000 (estimated)
Revenue 2021: $540,000 (estimated)
Bottom Line: ColdInbox
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Arthur Backouche got his diploma in Computer Science in 2019 and moved to Sydney, Australia. He started looking for work in digital marketing. Backouche discovered that sending LinkedIn messages asking about jobs was a time-consuming and repetitive process. So, he developed a tool to send bulk invitations on LinkedIn with a personalized message.
Backouche worked with Mohamed Hassen Mami, who is based in France, to turn his idea into a tool he called ColdInbox, which the pair launched on the tech review site, Product Hunter.
6. Eden Data
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Industry: Cybersecurity
Founded: March 2020
Headquarters: Austin, Texas
Revenue 2020: $180,000 - $405,000 (estimated)
Revenue 2021: $540,000
Bottom Line: Eden Data
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Eden Data is a cybersecurity consulting firm that helps startups improve their security as they grow. Taylor Hersom (pictured) was working as the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for an Austin consulting firm. He saw that cybersecurity was a problem for small- to medium-sized businesses, especially startups, but they often couldn’t afford to hire a CISO.
Hersom realized that many companies could afford the consulting fee of a virtual CISO instead. He left his job and started freelancing as a virtual CISO, established Eden Data and is now hiring other security professionals.
5. TeacherMade
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Industry: Education Technology
Founded: September 2020
Headquarters: Fernandina Beach, Florida
Revenue 2020: $75,000 (estimated)
Revenue 2021: $900,000
Bottom Line: TeacherMade
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Laura Bresko was an education tech entrepreneur for 25 years who established and sold two previous companies. She returned to teaching for the 2018-2019 academic year and was surprised to see a lack of educational technology with personalized lessons for students and tools to help teachers with lesson planning and started developing one.
When schools started closing, Bresko realized that teachers urgently needed her product. She and her partner started beta testing TeacherMade in August 2020, launched in September and, by December, had 100,000 users.
4. Coffee and Contracts
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Industry: Marketing
Founded: September 2019
Headquarters: St. Petersburg, Florida
Revenue 2019: Unknown
Revenue 2020:$1.98 million
Revenue 2021: $1.98 million
Bottom Line: Coffee and Contracts
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Haley Ingram was a real estate agent and learned to use social media to promote her business. She soon found her best leads came from her Instagram posts. When other local real estate agents saw her posts, they hired her to manage their own accounts.
Ingram decided to set up a subscription service for real estate agents that gave them a social media marketing toolkit they could use to generate business. She set up Coffee and Contracts in 2019 and now has over 7,000 clients.
3. Find People Fast
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Industry: Technology
Founded: February 2020
Headquarters: Los Angeles, California
Revenue 2020: Unknown
Revenue 2021:$2.4 million
Bottom Line: Find People Fast
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Daniela Sawyer saw a need in the market for a more accurate online people search platform. People use these services to run background checks on new hires or dates, track down long-lost friends and family members, or discover their heritage.
Sawyer and three co-founders set up Find People Fast as a Saas (software as a service) product. She is also the company’s Business Development Strategist. Find People Fast started with a small team of five employees and has quickly grown to around 60 people.
2. Momentum Coffee and Coworking
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Industry: Restaurant/Business Development
Founded: May 2020
Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois
Revenue 2020: $91,000 (estimated)
Revenue 2021: $156,000
Bottom Line: Momentum Coffee and Coworking
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Momentum Coffee and Coworking is the first affordable cafe, coworking space and business incubator to serve under-resourced entrepreneurs in the South Loop neighborhood of Chicago. Partners Tracy Powell and Nikki Bravo who created Momentum combine experience in real estate development, tech entrepreneurship, venture capital, crowdfunding and IT consulting.
Faced with the pandemic closing cafes and coworking spaces in 2020, the pair decided to stay open, and revenue has grown to $13,000 a month. Powell and Bravo are now planning two more outlets in Chicago.
1. UpBrainery Technology
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Industry: Education Technology
Founded: March 2020
Headquarters: Houston, Texas
Revenue 2020: Unknown
Revenue 2021:$1.04 million
Bottom Line: UpBrainery Technology
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Ghazal Qureshi is an educational tech entrepreneur who previously ran a startup that provided STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts and Math) education to kids. She left the company in 2019. Qureshi had been thinking about creating a project that made STEAM learning accessible to younger children through educational technology, and when the pandemic hit, she saw the need for a virtual platform.
UpBrainery Technology uses hands-on educational kits called Brain Bins. Kids can work on their own or with supervision. UpBrainery also offers individual tutoring or online classes.